A few days ago, Charles Nodder, Political Advisor to the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO), wrote on this blog:

“You should regard us [the NGO] as a key part of the solution [to stamping out illegal raptor persecution], not part of the problem. An organisation to be supported, not attacked”.

The thing is, in order to support an organisation there first needs to be a level of trust. It’s very hard for us to trust the NGO, and here’s why…

Until recently, we were under the impression (mistakenly, as it turns out) that the NGO wouldn’t tolerate any illegal gamekeeping activity and if any of their members were convicted of such an offence, they would be expelled from the organisation. This is what the NGO wants us all to believe, as outlined in their own Disciplinary Code, as published on their website.

However, it would now appear that the NGO does, in our opinion, tolerate some illegal gamekeeping activity. This has only come to light because we discovered that the NGO member who has been applying for licences to kill buzzards (and now sparrowhawks too) was recently convicted for being in possession of several banned poisons, including Carbofuran, the most common poison used to illegally kill birds of prey. We have now discovered that the NGO member, who we have called Mr Buzzard Licence Applicant, was not booted out of the NGO following his conviction for a wildlife crime that is closely linked with the illegal poisoning of birds of prey. Not only was he not booted out, but the NGO then actively supported this member by helping him to apply for his buzzard and sparrowhawk-killing licences.

When challenged about this, Mr Nodder provided some fascinating responses on this blog (see here). Before we take a closer look at those responses, we would first like to acknowledge Mr Nodder’s willingness to engage in conversation on this blog. That’s to his credit; there are many others within the game-shooting industry who have repeatedly refused to engage with us, citing excuses such as, “We don’t communicate with anonymous individuals” but who then go on to complain that we publish articles without giving them the right to reply!! Quite an astonishing response given today’s world of multi-media and social networking communications. A missed opportunity for them, but not really that surprising when you consider that many of them are still hanging on to other 19th Century ideals.

Anyway, back to that NGO policy of supposedly not tolerating any illegal gamekeeping activity.

To begin with, Mr Nodder tried to claim that “The possession of a banned substance [and remember we’re talking here about banned poisons that are routinely used to illegally poison wildlife] is quite clearly a possession offence and not an offence against wildlife”. We were astounded by this comment. There are many, many examples of ‘possession’ offences that are inextricably linked to wildlife crime. Here are just a few examples:

In many of these example cases, poisoned and/or other illegally killed raptors were also discovered. Indeed, in many cases it is the discovery of these poisoned animals that then leads on to a police investigation and search that then leads to the discovery of a stash of banned poisons. Quite often, as we all know, the subsequent charges that are brought do not often include charges for actually poisoning the wildlife, but instead the charges relate to the ‘lesser’ (in legal terms) offence of ‘possession’, either due to plea bargaining or due to lack of evidence needed to secure a conviction for the actual poisoning of a wild animal. It stands to reason that the actual poisoning of wildlife is inextricably linked to the possession of banned poisons; in order to poison wildlife, the criminal obviously first has to be in possession of the poison to carry out the act of poisoning.

The National Wildlife Crime Unit defines the possession of a banned poison as a wildlife crime – the Unit often publicises convictions for the possession of banned poisons in its reports. The Scottish Government also defines convictions for possession of banned poisons as wildlife crime – indeed, this is one of the offences that can trigger a prosecution under the new vicarious liability legislation, brought in specifically to address the continuing illegal persecution of raptors. The Crown Office considers possession of banned poisons as a wildlife crime because its specialist wildlife prosecutors take on these cases. The Partnership for Action against Wildlife Crime (PAW, of which the NGO boasts membership) also considers possession of banned poisons a wildlife crime – they, too, publicise ‘possession’ convictions in their newsletters.

So why is it that the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation doesn’t accept possession of banned poisons as a wildlife crime? And if they don’t, why the hell are they allowed to participate in the Raptor Persecution Wildlife Crime Priority Group? Surely that group has been established to find ways of stamping out illegal raptor persecution, but how can it achieve that if one organisational member refuses to expel members who have been convicted of a serious wildlife crime? It makes a mockery of the whole group and does absolutely nothing to instill public confidence in the sincerity of the process.

Mr Nodder’s next explanation for why Mr Buzzard Licence Applicant wasn’t booted out of the NGO was to suggest that possession of a banned poison was not a ‘gamekeeping activity’. On the contrary, if Mr Nodder took the time to look at the conviction statistics (publicly available to those who want to look) he would notice that the significant majority of those convicted for possession of banned poisons are gamekeepers, and that trend has continued for many years. In the case of Mr Buzzard Licence Applicant, his stashes of banned poisons were found in his work vehicle and inside one of his pheasant pens. There’s simply no denying it, unless of course you happen to be the NGO, trying to justify why you haven’t stuck to your stated Disciplinary Code and expelled a member for his criminal conviction.

And what sort of message does this policy send to other NGO members? ‘Don’t worry if you get caught in possession of banned poisons, we won’t kick you out of the club’. It makes you wonder what the law-abiding members of the NGO feel about this policy. If you were a law-abiding member (and there must be some, surely), would you want to be a member of a group that welcomed those with a criminal conviction related to banned poisons? If the NGO doesn’t distinguish between criminal and law-abiding members, why should we?

The third argument Mr Nodder used to try and get us to drop what must be quite embarrassing questions was to pull out the old ‘It’s a spent conviction so we can’t discuss it’ routine. Nice try, but in this case, wholly inapplicable. The legislation that prevents publication of so-called ‘spent convictions’ is the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (see here for a good explanation). Its basic premise is that after a period of x years of rehabilitation (depending on the type of crime committed – in this case, five years), the conviction can be ignored and need not be divulged (with one or two exceptions). If somebody does then publish information about the conviction, they may be subject to libel damages, but only if the primary motive of publishing the information was malicious. In this case, seeing as though we haven’t named Mr Buzzard Licence Applicant, even though we’ve had lots of opportunity to do so (and indeed our own received legal advice was that we could name him), it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate that we are acting in malice (against him as an individual) by discussing his spent conviction because he hasn’t been identified as a named individual. Our primary motive for discussing this case has been to (a) examine the Natural England/DEFRA policy that allows convicted wildlife criminals to apply for licences to kill protected species (see earlier blogs on this), and (b) to examine the sincerity of the NGO’s claims that they won’t tolerate any illegal gamekeeping activity and will expel any member with such a conviction.

And while we’re on the subject of the Rehab of Offenders Act, we’ve made a very interesting observation. Certain professions are exempt from the Act, so that individuals are not allowed to withhold details of previous convictions in relation to job applications. These professions include teachers, social workers, doctors, dentists, vets, accountants etc. But interestingly, also included are “Employees of the RSPCA or SSPCA whose duties extend to the humane killing of animals”. Now then, it is beyond question that the duties of gamekeepers ‘extend to the humane killing of animals’. They probably kill (legitimately) more animals on a daily basis than all the RSPCA and SSPCA employees put together. So why are gamekeepers not included in this list of exemptions? Why should a gamekeeper be able to hide past wildlife crime convictions but an RSPCA/SSPCA employee cannot? That’s a question for the policy makers…

In summary then, in our opinion the NGO’s stated claim that they don’t tolerate any illegal gamekeeping activity is not convincing. They don’t view the possession of a banned poison as a wildlife crime and a conviction for possession of a banned poison is not enough to warrant expulsion from the NGO, even when that poison just happens to be the most commonly used substance to illegally kill birds of prey. It doesn’t matter to us how many wildlife crime groups the NGO has joined – in our view this is just a convenient shield for hiding true intentions – we don’t trust them and will continue to view them with suspicion until they start to back up their stated claims with convincing actions.

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22 Responses to “Why we don’t trust the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation”

I don’t trust any individual or organisation that routinely kills, both legal and illegally, OUR wildlife just to protect a species that is bred purely to be at shot for fun. Possibly by the same kind of sick minded individuals that would likely get the same satisfaction out of Badger baiting, Cock fighting and Fox hunting etc.

Al Jazeera UK News two days ago, revealed the mass slaughter of Elephants in Zimbabwe. These animals had drunk from a poisoned watering hole, poisoned by cyanide. Police and wardens had arrested 10 men and found caches of cyanide poison in several villages, provided by ivory procurers for the Chinese and other Far Eastern markets. Here in Scotland and the rest of the UK, we have the same poisoning of our wildlife. A response is taking place to stem this slaughter of African wildlife, but where is the response in Scotland from our Government and those supposedly enforcing the law against such persecution? I have yet to hear the voice of the WWF Scotland on this issue, or has it been told to ignore such threats to our birds of prey, and spend its time campaigning about climate change? The majority of people in Scotland find it surprising that one third of the Scottish landscape is under the control of shooting estates, and that one man, the gamekeeper can do as he pleases with what can live and die on his patch. People are becoming more aware that the old tosh about these estates and farming have given us a wonderful countryside, and that the gamekeeper keeps “vermin” under control, thus creating a biodiverse environment. No they do not, but some individual estates do follow the rules as do a fair number of farmers, but it is the RSPB, Scottish Wildlife Trust and the John Muir Trust that are saving islands of high conservation value for posterity.

An extremely interesting point…we should “see ourselves as others see us” to quote the national poet.I would suggest there are a couple of reasons why we see no international response [such as WWF or EIA] to our shocking internal destruction of wildlife and habitats. Firstly no one has brought it directly to their attention as a campaigning matter and secondly clearly linked, is the fact that even our most heavily involved domestic conservation organisations still persist in respecting the thoroughly discredited traditional landowning/land use status quo in our Uplands.
What is needed is a far more radical approach to changing this disgraceful and damaging [to Scotland and the UK’s international reputation] situation. If that means international organisations shining a bright light into the dirty little corners of our countryside, then so be it.
Far, far too much tacit belief in systems, including our justice systems, giving us the countryside and wildlife that we need and deserve. A laissez faire, landowner lead shooting regime, for instance, that has allowed us to legally allow snaring, crow trapping and various other methods of vermin control which are illegal in most other “civilised” countries.

I have really said all I have to say on the subject in the various lengthy comments I posted on your previous blog (to which you have provided a link above). Thank you for publishing them all. I can only ask that people read them carefully and reflect. I am sorry that RPS and others do not trust the NGO. Perhaps one day you will. I certainly hope so because we are only going to win the fight against raptor persecution by everyone working together on it. Shutting ourselves away in our own fortresses and chucking brickbats at each other from a distance won’t get the job done.

That is just spin doctoring.
If you want trust you have to answer the questions implicit in the article.
Does the NGO consider possession of illegal wildlife poisons (as in the article) a wildlife crime?
If yes why are they not expelling members found guilt of such offences.
If no, then at least come clean and say so.

You cannot fall back on your previous comments, they were too vague and that is why a clarification on the question above is needed.
Further silence will just prove that the answer to the question above is no but you haven’t the guts to admit it.

Mr Nodder
I wish I could truly believe that the NGO are seriously involved in the fight against Raptor persecution, unfortunately I cannot.

Firstly let me say that I believe that the majority of the shooting estates and their gamekeepers would love to see forums such as the RPS and societies such as the RSPB, SRSG’s etc, vanish into oblivion so that they can continue doing what they’ve always done without having to look over their shoulder, or spout platitudes aimed at quietening the voices hell bent on spoiling their solace. That’s not going to happen, it’s going to become more and more intense as more and more illegal practices are revealed for all to see.

Secondly the NGO have had every opportunity to clean up their act and yet you still continue to spout what we all think to be lies and cover-ups in an attempt to show yourselves as being against Raptor persecution, judging by your actions we think you only want to appear as if you are against it. You have been given every opportunity to say why you continue to back gamekeepers convicted of crimes against wildlife whilst they are knowingly in possession of illegal poisons and you have still failed to give an answer.

The majority of us may not like shooting per se but have no objections to it provided it is carried out in a manner that does not endanger protected wildlife and does not turn the natural habitat into a monocultural wilderness. Big business shooting estates need to take a good look at what they are doing to our countryside and it’s wildlife and put a stop to it now before it’s too late, of course, that’s if they really care as much about the countryside as they say they do.

Charles, unfortunately some will view your lack of response to the important questions as just that “hiding away in your fortress”. The NGO are in a key position to support work towards the conflict resolution that is required, but and it is a big but, there are many who have witnessed the stalling and false promises that have plagued all previous attempts. Respect , honesty and integrity are the cornerstones of working together, they build the trust that is required to make the changes that are needed, if any part of that triangle is missing the trust fails and there is no working together only the current position of playing cat and mouse.

It was sad to read today in the comic magazine that the NGO are complaining there is no right of appeal against the decision not to grant the licenses to kill 16 Buzzards and 3 Sparrowhawks. It’s a pity they cant see both sides and different aspects of this argument, I live near a wooded valley, a river runs through this valley and further on through a busy town centre. Every year young rats use to follow the river as they disperse from the town and cause problems in some of the homes along the river. Hoards of Rabbits use to cause problems for the gardeners at the allotments, since a pair of Buzzards took up territory around 2004 these problems have reduced dramatically, Corvid numbers have dropped and a Sparrowhawk pair that nested regularly have been chased away. Why the hell should someone have the right to knock our community back twenty years by removing these Buzzards just on a whim that they might be able to shoot a few more pheasants. Charles some of your members don’t give a stuff about wildlife, they don’t give a stuff about the consequences of their actions on others they are just obsessed with shooting and numbers in the bag.

( why we don’t trust rspb / raptor persecution scotland) what’s happened to the supposed poisoning incidents up north seems to have gone very quiet all of ah sudden ??
Anyone go any answers to what really happened ?

‘Supposed poisoning incidents up north’? If you’re talking about the Ross-shire Massacre, which killed at least 22 red kites and buzzards in one incident…..we’ll be blogging about the full, untold story as soon as is legally possible.